


Gallifrey is Burning

by Freya1970



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Feelings Realization, POV Tegan Jovanka, Please Don't Kill Me, Romance, So good it's fanfiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2017-04-23
Packaged: 2018-10-23 00:50:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Freya1970/pseuds/Freya1970
Summary: Dance and the world shall burn...





	Gallifrey is Burning

_Dance and the world shall burn._

_Sing and the sky shall fall._

_Smile and time shall end in eternity._

_Gallifrey is burning._

 

 

  


“That’s a poem,” I asked perplexed by the words that the Doctor had recited to me. It was dark out with only the firelight to see him with.  He was looking up at the stars. Gazing at them. It was as if he was a million miles away then, instead of spending another quite moment on the Eye of Orion.  We’ve been here three days and I still don’t know what had persuaded me to come with him at the airport.  Perhaps it was the desperate look in his eyes when we first saw each other again. Perhaps it was the words “I care” that he had said to me. Or perhaps it was the moment I realized his lips were on mine…kissing me.  That’s when I knew this was all a dream.  The Doctor would have never come out of the blue, tell me he cared for me and then kiss me. The concept of passion was as I have come to know him, foreign. But I’m human and I have my own secret fantasies.  But the flames of the fire had burned me that afternoon, leaving my fingers stinging with pain and blistered.

This was truly real.  A little too real for my liking.  I often wonder when the play will be done, and the Master will step out applauding that I had played my part well. At this thought, my heart sunk. My brave heart could not stand to be broken again. Despite the unreal feeling I felt, I pursued this reality.

It was then I turned my attention to him. He was laid back against his bedding he had scrounged from the TARDIS. He looked different than he had before. Something had changed for him since I last saw him. He was much more open than he had been before. More relaxed around me as if he’d known me a lifetime instead of a few years. He sighed apparently frustrated with my lack of understanding. I smiled at this. It was good that not everything had changed between us. “Not just a poem. It’s a love poem.”

I scoffed at his remark. “Maybe if your Nero’s wife.”

Again another sigh but this time he placed his hands behind his hatless head and shifted his eyes in my direction. “Nero’s from Earth not Gallifrey.”

The man was intolerable! I knew Nero was from Earth! “But why is Gallifrey burning at the end of it then?”

“Burning symbolizes passion,” he explained.  “It’s not meant to be literal, Tegan.”

“Gallifrey is passion?” I wasn’t one of those girls who had a lot of love poems read to them in school. I’ve never had a poetry contest in lieu of a marriage proposal. Bryon, Keats and whoever else was out there were all just a jumble of words that somehow meant they loved their wife, girlfriend, or both.

“ _Gallifreyans_ can be passionate if we chose to be so.”

“But not you.” I couldn’t imagine the Doctor being passionate about anyone. Well, except possibly Nyssa. He always treated her differently. Always listened to her when he didn’t listen to me. Always smiled at her when she walked in the room. But when I walked in the room, he tensed up. Always shutting me out. Well, not always, sometimes I was the one shutting him out.

“What do you mean not me,” he asked, looking put out.

“I mean you’re passionate about your work but not much else,” I explained. He didn’t seem very happy about that. In fact, he looked…sad.

“The poem symbolizes the havoc that love can do to one’s life,” he said in a reflective tone. “It’s a warning _not_ to let love control your mind or life.”

“Sounds like a load of rubbish to me,” I said immediately afterward as if I had all the experience he hadn’t.  Love is a cruel master. “What’s life without love?”

“Empty, cold, and lonely,” he replied, turning his head towards the stars once again and saying the words almost as if the stars themselves had told him to say them.

“Yours,” I guessed.

“It was for a while,” he admitted solemnly.

“Was,” I questioned.

“Then I met someone,” he said, his expression matching his reflective mood.

“Then what happened,” I asked. Truth or dare,  or twenty questions. It all added up to me being nosey.  I was poking my nose where it didn’t belong. But the Doctor seemed to be the train wreck that I couldn’t stop watching. I wanted to know him more than just his physiology, his heritage, or who his enemies were. I wanted to know more about him as a person. There was certainly more to him than what I’ve seen over the last few years. At least I hoped so.

Then he turned his eyes towards me and reached out with his hand and took mine in his and said to me: “Gallifrey started burning.”


End file.
